The reader of The Idiot and the Odyssey II on a flight from Heraklion to Rome indicated that he enjoyed the following passage that occurs in Naples, Italy:
First, I out-Naples a Neapolitan cameriere when I refuse to pay the bill for a lousy piece of pastry at a café in the glass-vaulted Galleria Umberto I shopping plaza near the San Carlo Opera House.
I’d ordered a pastry that, after the long day’s hike, looked delicious and sat at a table to eat it. Naturally, pastries cost more to eat at a table than standing up or taking away. But this one is so stale that I don’t eat it and don’t pay for it. Instead, I leave a euro tip on the table and walk away.
“Hey, you didn’t pay for this!” the cameriere shouts as we walk towards the exit to via Roma.
“It’s not worth paying for, it’s old, it’s not edible,” I scream. “I wouldn’t give it to my dog.”
“But you’ve still got to pay,” he says.
“No, no,” I reply. “I’m not going to pay.”
“NO?!? Come no, come no?” he shouts, screaming as I walk away through the Galleria Umberto I, thinking that a bullet or a butter knife will enter my back at any moment. We escape into the anonymity of the via Toledo to discover a city that is much less traffic-congested and threatening than people make out. The fact that I’m not killed makes me feel that the pastry must have, as I thought, been a couple days old.
Today, whenever Luke or I use the word “No,” one of us invariably yells “No?!? Come no?”
It’s become our symbolic association with Naples.
(Photo: Steven Miller)